How big the council's free savings are compared with its yearly running costs — effectively how many months it could absorb a shock before hitting trouble. It matters because councils that run their savings down to nothing are the ones that end up declaring effective bankruptcy. Higher means a bigger safety cushion; a low and steadily falling figure is the classic warning sign that a council is heading for the edge.
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plymouth UA | unitary | -23.42 | 1st worst of 62 |
| Woking BC | district | -6.95 | 1st worst of 164 |
| Hillingdon | london | -1.83 | 1st worst of 33 |
| High Peak | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Pendle | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Oxford | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Babergh | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Redditch BC | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Nuneaton & Bedworth | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Bromsgrove | district | 0 | 10th worst of 164 |
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runnymede | district | 1,368 | 1st best of 164 |
| South Oxfordshire | district | 269.42 | 2nd best of 164 |
| Wychavon | district | 182.46 | 3rd best of 164 |
| North Warwickshire | district | 179.56 | 4th best of 164 |
| Vale of White Horse DC | district | 153.46 | 5th best of 164 |
| Chichester | district | 135.23 | 6th best of 164 |
| Hart DC | district | 118.78 | 7th best of 164 |
| Horsham | district | 116.69 | 8th best of 164 |
| Malvern Hills | district | 115.87 | 9th best of 164 |
| Tamworth | district | 114.14 | 10th best of 164 |
| name | reserves-cover |
|---|---|
| dataset | 01-revenue-outturn |
| kind | constructed |
| type | percentage |
| unit | % of net revenue expenditure |
| grain | council-year |
| role | feature |
| source | "Formula: `RS_resunall_end_cy / RS_netrevexp_net_exp`. Inputs: this dataset's CSV only" |
| period | "FY 2017-18 to 2024-25, annual (year_ending 201803-202503)" |
| missingness | "Rows with status other than "submitted" (i.e. "total" aggregates and "not submitted") must be filtered out; a non-submitted council-year is a genuine gap, not zero. 2024-25 covers 410/411 councils. Councils abolished/created in 2017-25 reorganisations appear only for the years they existed." |
| score_note | Months-of-resilience ratio, the classic s114 precursor — available, intuitive, and strongly separates well- from badly-run councils. |
| calculated | calculated/reserves-cover.csv |
| calculated_rows | 3425 |
| calculated_periods | 2017-18 to 2024-25 |
| calculated_date | 2026-08-13 |
| peer_group | districts (n=204), unitaries (n=65), metropolitan boroughs (n=36), London boroughs (n=33), counties (n=27) — scored within each class against its median/IQR |
Unallocated reserves at year end as a share of the net budget — effectively months of financial resilience. A sustained fall toward zero is the classic section 114 precursor; corroborate with sibling dataset 04-efs-s114. For scoring it distinguishes councils absorbing pressure from those exhausting their buffer.